Ynon Kreiz

Ynon Kreiz
Kreiz in 2014
Born	Ramat Gan, Israel
Nationality	Israeli and American
Education	Tel Aviv University (BA); UCLA Anderson School of Management (MBA)
Occupation	Business executive
Company	Mattel, Inc.
Title	Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Spouse	Anat Fabrikant

Ynon Kreiz is an Israeli and American business executive who has been chairman and chief executive officer of the toy and entertainment company Mattel, Inc. since April 2018. He was appointed chief executive on 26 April 2018, succeeding Margo Georgiadis, and was named chairman of Mattel's board the following month. Before joining Mattel, Kreiz built a career running media and entertainment companies on both sides of the Atlantic: he co-founded and led the children's broadcaster Fox Kids Europe from the mid-1990s until Walt Disney bought majority control of it in 2002, was a venture capitalist at Balderton Capital, then chaired and ran the Netherlands-based television producer Endemol from 2008 to 2011 and the YouTube network Maker Studios from 2012 to 2016, the latter sold to Disney in a deal worth up to $950 million.

At Mattel, Kreiz took over a company that had just reported an annual loss of more than a billion dollars and had lost the Disney Princess doll license, and he built his tenure around a "brand-first" turnaround: paying down debt, cutting costs, and turning Mattel's toy franchises, above all Barbie, into film, television and gaming properties. That strategy produced its highest-profile result in July 2023, when Warner Bros.' live-action Barbie film, produced with Mattel, became the highest-grossing release of the year and drove a surge in Barbie doll sales that Mattel reported as a 16 percent increase for the quarter.

By 2026, Kreiz's continued leadership of Mattel had itself become a subject of investor pressure. In May 2026 the activist fund Southeastern Asset Management, which holds more than four percent of Mattel's stock, publicly called on the board to explore a sale of the company, a leveraged buyout by a private equity firm, or a merger with rival Hasbro, and separately criticised the design of Kreiz's pay package. Mattel's board said it would "continue to consider the views expressed in Southeastern's letter" while maintaining its existing strategy. As of late September 2026 Kreiz remains Mattel's chairman and chief executive, and the company's shares were trading close to their 52-week low.

Early life and education

Ynon Kreiz was born in Ramat Gan, Israel. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics and management from Tel Aviv University before moving to the United States for graduate study, earning a Master of Business Administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles. While at UCLA, Kreiz became a business partner of the Israeli-American media executive Haim Saban, which took him back to Los Angeles and then to London to help build Saban's children's television interests in Europe. He went on to serve on the UCLA Anderson School of Management's board of trustees, maintaining a formal tie to his graduate school.

Career

Fox Kids Europe, 1990s to 2002

Kreiz co-founded Fox Kids Europe N.V. in London as a joint venture tied to Saban's and News Corporation's children's television interests, and served as its chairman and chief executive. Under his leadership the company grew into one of the fastest-growing pay-television operations in Europe and the Middle East, operating channels across 54 countries and broadcasting in 17 languages. Disney acquired majority ownership of Fox Kids Europe in 2002, the deal cited by Kreiz's later official biography as worth $2.9 billion, and Kreiz left the company that year.

Balderton Capital

After leaving Fox Kids Europe, Kreiz spent several years as a venture capitalist, working as a general partner at the London-based early-stage investment firm Balderton Capital, then known as Benchmark Capital Europe. He served on the boards of several of the firm's media and technology portfolio companies during this period.

Endemol, 2008 to 2011

In 2008 Kreiz became chairman and chief executive of Endemol Group, the Netherlands-based independent television producer behind formats including Big Brother and Deal or No Deal, which under his leadership produced more than 10,000 hours of programming a year. He took the job shortly after a 2007 leveraged buyout of Endemol by a consortium of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Mediaset and co-founder John de Mol's Cyrte Investments had left the company carrying roughly €2.8 billion of debt at the onset of the global financial crisis. Under Kreiz, Endemol expanded from unscripted reality formats into scripted programming and distribution and pursued a series of acquisitions and new strategic partnerships, while the company simultaneously worked through protracted negotiations with its lenders over the buyout debt. Kreiz stepped down as Endemol's chairman and chief executive in June 2011 in the midst of that financial restructuring with lenders.

Maker Studios, 2012 to 2016

Kreiz invested in the Los Angeles multi-channel YouTube network Maker Studios in 2012 and joined its board as chairman, becoming chief executive in 2013. By early 2014 Maker had grown into one of YouTube's largest networks, with more than 55,000 channels, roughly 380 million subscribers and about 5.5 billion monthly views. On 7 May 2014, with Kreiz as executive chairman and chief executive, Disney announced it would acquire Maker Studios for approximately $500 million in cash, with Maker's shareholders eligible for up to a further $450 million tied to performance targets for 2014 and 2015. Under Kreiz, Maker's distribution expanded beyond YouTube through deals with Dish Network and Vimeo and the launch of branded apps and video hubs for individual creators, though the company later fell short of the growth targets attached to Disney's earn-out. Kreiz stepped down as Maker's chief executive in January 2016, when its earn-out agreement with Disney expired.

Mattel: joining as chief executive, 2018

Mattel appointed Kreiz to its board of directors as an independent director in June 2017, while Margo Georgiadis, a former Google executive, was chief executive. Mattel was then in acute distress: the company had reported a net loss of more than a billion dollars for 2017, had recently lost its long-running license to make Disney Princess dolls to Hasbro, and was contending with the bankruptcy of its largest retail customer, Toys "R" Us. Kreiz was named chief executive effective 26 April 2018 and was appointed chairman of the board in May 2018. His initial equity award as chief executive was heavily weighted to performance, with Mattel's proxy statement noting that 84 percent of his 2018 equity grant was tied to company and stock-price performance, including a stock option that vested only if Mattel's three-year total shareholder return reached at least the 65th percentile of the S&P 500, and that he received no guaranteed salary increase or signing bonus.

Mattel: turnaround and cost cutting, 2018 to 2020

Within months of taking over, Kreiz set out a plan to expand Mattel's toy franchises into films, television, digital games and other media, telling reporters that Barbie and other Mattel properties could become the basis of a Hollywood-style content business. That strategy was paired with a "Structural Simplification" cost-savings program and, later, a "capital-light" manufacturing plan that closed company-operated factories in China, Indonesia and Mexico and scheduled the closure of a Canadian plant, shifting more production to third-party manufacturers. Mattel's own account of Kreiz's tenure states that the company exceeded its Structural Simplification savings target in 2019 and posted four consecutive quarters of improved profitability that year, and that total debt fell from $2.85 billion in 2018 to $2.57 billion in 2021. As of the end of fiscal 2019 Mattel reported approximately 24,000 employees, excluding temporary and seasonal workers. Company-reported net sales were $4.51 billion in 2018 and $4.50 billion in 2019, essentially flat as the turnaround work continued, before rising to $4.58 billion in 2020, a year in which Mattel's toy sales benefited from families spending more time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On 7 June 2021 Kreiz testified in person before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform in a hearing entitled "Sleeping Danger: The Rock 'n Play and Failures in Infant Product Safety," appearing alongside Fisher-Price's global head of infant and preschool, Chuck Scothon. The hearing concerned the Fisher-Price Rock 'n Play Sleeper, an inclined infant sleeper first recalled on 12 April 2019, about a year into Kreiz's tenure, after regulators linked it to 32 infant deaths; roughly 4.7 million units were recalled. Fisher-Price re-announced the recall in January 2023 after additional fatalities came to light, bringing the reported death toll to at least 40. (See Template:Section link below for the litigation that followed.)

Mattel: entertainment expansion and the Barbie film, 2021 to 2023

Mattel's turnaround accelerated after 2020. Under Kreiz, the company reported net sales of $5.46 billion in 2021, up 19 percent on 2020, with operating income up 95 percent, which Mattel described as its highest annual growth rate in a decade. In February 2022 Kreiz set out a growth strategy built around expanding Mattel's media and gaming business, including plans for a slate of feature films based on its toy brands, and named a company film studio to run alongside its existing television unit.

The centrepiece of that strategy was Barbie, a live-action film starring Margot Robbie and directed by Greta Gerwig that Warner Bros. released in July 2023. The film became the highest-grossing release of 2023 worldwide and one of the highest-grossing films of all time, and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning Best Original Song. Mattel reported that Barbie doll sales in the United States rose 25 percent in the July and August period compared with the year before, that it sold about $350 million of Barbie merchandise in the third quarter of 2023, and that it expected to earn more than $125 million from its share of the film's box office and related merchandise. Third-quarter 2023 earnings of $1.08 per share beat analysts' average estimate of 86 cents, on sales that grew 9.3 percent to $1.92 billion, and Mattel raised its full-year adjusted earnings guidance to $1.15 to $1.25 a share and its gross-margin guidance to 48 percent. Despite those results, Mattel's shares fell more than 7 percent in after-hours trading on the day of the report, as investors focused on the difficulty of repeating a single film's windfall.

Mattel: after Barbie, 2024 to 2025

Mattel's revenue growth cooled after the Barbie film year: net sales were $5.44 billion in 2023, $5.38 billion in 2024 and $5.35 billion in 2025, each essentially flat to slightly down year over year. Mattel reported full-year 2024 net sales of $5.3 billion, down about 1 percent, but operating income of $694 million, up $133 million, which Kreiz attributed to "strong operational excellence," citing profitability growth, gross-margin expansion and free cash flow that came in "well ahead of expectations." As of 31 December 2024 Mattel disclosed that the ratio of Kreiz's total compensation to that of its median employee was 4,028 to 1, and Kreiz's reported total compensation for 2024 was $37.8 million. As of the end of fiscal 2023 the company reported approximately 33,000 employees including temporary and seasonal workers, of whom about 28,400 worked outside the United States and roughly 23,600 in manufacturing.

Mattel: 2026 brand-centric strategy and activist pressure

In February 2026 Mattel gave 2026 adjusted earnings-per-share guidance of $1.18 to $1.30, below the $1.41 it had reported for adjusted earnings in 2025, and Kreiz described 2026 as "an important year for Mattel as we implement our new brand-centric strategy to grow our IP-driven play and family entertainment business." The plan calls for about $150 million of strategic investment in 2026, split roughly $110 million for technology and capabilities and $40 million for performance marketing, organised around individual brands rather than Mattel's older divisional structure, with the film releases Masters of the Universe and Matchbox as its most visible entertainment bets. Two days after Mattel's February 2026 earnings release, Kreiz bought 65,000 Mattel shares on the open market at $15.53 each, a purchase of more than $1 million.

The stock Kreiz oversees did not recover through the first half of 2026. In a letter made public on 7 May 2026, Southeastern Asset Management, an investor in the company for more than eight years holding over four percent of its stock, wrote that the shares had fallen more than 20 percent during 2026 and argued that "we see a value per share today approaching $30, but we do not want to wait longer for that to be realized," urging the board to explore a sale to a private equity firm, a merger with Hasbro, or a sale to a media company better placed to exploit the intellectual property Kreiz had spent years building up. Southeastern's letter praised Kreiz personally, saying it was "grateful for your leadership that stabilized the business during a difficult period," but separately criticised his compensation structure as one that "incentivizes waiting too long for a stock price over $30." The board responded that it was "committed to acting in the best interests of all shareholders" and would "continue to consider the views expressed in Southeastern's letter," while affirming Kreiz's existing IP-driven strategy. By the second quarter of 2026, reported on 4 August 2026, net sales under Kreiz had risen 10 percent to $1.125 billion, driven by Hot Wheels, whose gross billings grew 14 percent to $463.3 million, while Barbie billings fell 5 percent and the infant, toddler and preschool category built around Fisher-Price fell 11 percent; the quarter's adjusted operating income fell to $39 million from $96 million a year earlier and the company posted an adjusted loss of one cent a share, which it attributed to tariffs, inflation, higher royalties and unfavourable currency movements. As of 25 September 2026, its shares traded at $13.29, near the bottom of a 52-week range of $12.73 to $22.48, giving the company a market capitalisation of about $3.8 billion.

Leadership and management style

Kreiz has repeatedly framed his role as converting the company's toy franchises into broader entertainment and content businesses rather than running a traditional manufacturer, telling CNBC in 2018 that he wanted its brands, led by Barbie, to become the basis of films and other content in the way that Marvel or Disney's own franchises had. He carried that approach into his description of 2026 as the year the company would stop being "just a toy company" and become "a full IP entertainment platform," a reorganisation he pursued by grouping operations around individual brands rather than the toy-category divisions used previously. Kreiz has also described wanting the company's culture to combine seriousness about its brands with informality about itself, telling Variety in 2023 that "we take our brands seriously. We take what we do seriously. But we don't take ourselves too seriously." On diversity and representation in the product lines he oversees, Kreiz has said that "designing products that speak to diversity, equity and inclusion is endemic; it's part of what we do," and that the company takes seriously "the real societal impact" of its products. A recurring theme of his public statements about entrepreneurship, dating to an earlier interview about his television career, is that "if you have a good idea you can make things happen…this is a field where if you succeed, you can succeed big time."

Major deals and strategic decisions

Across his career Kreiz has repeatedly built or run media companies to the point of a sale to a larger buyer. Fox Kids Europe was sold in majority part to Disney in 2002 in a deal his own official biography values at $2.9 billion. At Maker Studios, Kreiz negotiated the sale of the company to Disney in 2014 for roughly $500 million upfront plus up to $450 million in earn-out payments tied to growth targets that Maker later failed to fully meet.

Kreiz's central strategic decision at the company was to co-produce and license the Barbie film with Warner Bros. rather than simply licensing the Barbie brand out, giving him a direct financial stake in the film's box-office and merchandise performance; he said it would generate more than $125 million from box office and merchandise combined. By 2024 that model had grown into a wider film slate; Kreiz's own account of his tenure states that 16 motion pictures were in production with major studio partners as of that year. On the manufacturing side, his "capital-light" restructuring closed several company-run factories in favour of third-party manufacturing relationships, a strategic bet on lower fixed costs that also increased his company's exposure to tariff and trade-policy risk, a risk that materialised in 2026 when higher tariff costs weighed on second-quarter margins.

The most consequential decision of Kreiz's later Mattel tenure may be one he has not yet made: whether to pursue any of the strategic alternatives, sale, private-equity buyout, or a Hasbro combination, that Southeastern Asset Management urged on the board in May 2026. Southeastern's letter noted that private equity firms "have circled Mattel in the last few years," viewed the company as a cash-generative business that could support higher leverage outside public markets, and argued that a combination with Hasbro would produce material cost synergies given Hasbro's stronger execution in digital games. As of late September 2026, Mattel had not announced any such transaction, and Kreiz continued to lead the company's existing brand-centric strategy.

Financial and market performance

Under Kreiz, Mattel's reported net sales moved from $4.51 billion in 2018, his first partial year as chief executive, to $4.50 billion in 2019, $4.58 billion in 2020, $5.46 billion in 2021, $5.43 billion in 2022, $5.44 billion in 2023, $5.38 billion in 2024 and $5.35 billion in 2025. The clearest inflection point was 2021, when net sales rose 19 percent and operating income rose 95 percent year over year, which Mattel described as its best annual growth in a decade, followed by the 2023 Barbie film year, when Mattel raised full-year adjusted earnings guidance to $1.15 to $1.25 a share.

Profitability, however, weakened after 2024. Full-year 2024 operating income was $694 million on a gross margin of 50.8 percent, but full-year 2025 operating income fell to $546 million (adjusted operating income of $620 million) on a gross margin of 48.7 percent, with earnings per share of $1.24 versus $1.58 the year before. The deterioration continued into 2026: second-quarter net sales rose 10 percent to $1.125 billion, but adjusted operating income fell more than half, to $39 million from $96 million, and Mattel posted an adjusted per-share loss of one cent against adjusted earnings of 21 cents a year earlier, a decline the company attributed to tariffs, inflation, higher royalty costs and unfavourable foreign exchange.

Mattel's workforce grew over Kreiz's tenure even as its structure changed: the company reported approximately 24,000 employees, excluding temporary and seasonal workers, at the end of fiscal 2019; approximately 33,000 employees including temporary and seasonal workers at the end of fiscal 2023; and approximately 31,000 employees including temporary and seasonal workers, in 34 countries, at the end of fiscal 2025. Retail concentration remained a persistent risk through Kreiz's tenure: in 2025, Walmart, Target and Amazon together accounted for approximately 42 percent of Mattel's worldwide net sales ($1.08 billion, $0.63 billion and $0.52 billion respectively), down slightly from 44 percent in 2024.

On the stock market, Mattel shares reached the top of their recent trading range following the Barbie film's success in 2023, but by September 2026 had fallen back to trade near the bottom of a 52-week range of $12.73 to $22.48, closing at $13.29 on 25 September 2026 for a market capitalisation of roughly $3.8 billion. Southeastern Asset Management's May 2026 letter put the decline in explicit terms, stating that Mattel shares had fallen more than 20 percent since the start of the year.

Board memberships and outside roles

Kreiz sits on the board of directors of Warner Music Group. He is a member of the board of trustees of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, his graduate alma mater, and has also served on the board of trustees of the Paley Center for Media. He is a member of Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of large American companies. A political-giving tracker compiled by 1792 Exchange records Kreiz's personal political contributions as totalling approximately $10,750, divided between Republican and Democratic recipients.

Controversies

Kreiz's Mattel tenure has been shaped by the Fisher-Price Rock 'n Play Sleeper, a product introduced before he became chief executive but recalled on his watch. Regulators recalled about 4.7 million Rock 'n Play units on 12 April 2019, roughly a year after Kreiz took over, following reports linking the inclined sleeper to 32 infant deaths. Litigation followed almost immediately, and in August 2019 the resulting product-liability lawsuits were consolidated into multidistrict litigation in the Western District of New York. In January 2023 Fisher-Price re-announced the recall after additional deaths raised the reported toll to at least 40. On 7 June 2021 Kreiz appeared in person before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in a hearing titled "Sleeping Danger: The Rock 'n Play and Failures in Infant Product Safety," testifying alongside Fisher-Price's global head of infant and preschool. The litigation was resolved several years later: the parties reached a $19 million class-action settlement in July 2024, a federal judge approved it on 28 February 2025, it took effect on 31 March 2025, and the multidistrict litigation formally closed in August 2025.

Kreiz's compensation has drawn separate criticism from shareholders. In its May 2026 letter, Southeastern Asset Management, while crediting Kreiz with stabilising Mattel, argued that his pay package "incentivizes waiting too long for a stock price over $30" rather than rewarding faster value creation, and used that criticism as part of its broader argument that Mattel's board should explore selling the company. Mattel disclosed that Kreiz's total 2024 compensation, at $37.8 million, was 4,028 times the pay of the company's median employee. Mattel's board publicly declined to address the compensation criticism directly, saying only that it would "continue to consider the views expressed in Southeastern's letter."

Earlier in Kreiz's career, his departure from both Endemol and Maker Studios came at moments of financial or contractual difficulty rather than at a point of unambiguous success: he left Endemol in June 2011 in the midst of a restructuring of the company's leveraged-buyout debt with its lenders, and he left Maker Studios in January 2016 after the company fell short of the subscriber and revenue growth targets attached to its earn-out agreement with Disney, reportedly qualifying for less than half of the $450 million in potential earn-out payments.

Personal life

Kreiz is Israeli and American. He is married to Anat Fabrikant, a former Olympic sailor who represented Israel. Profiled by The Times of Israel in 2023, Kreiz said he continues to speak Hebrew at home.

See also

• Mattel
• Barbie (film)
• Hasbro
• Maker Studios
• Endemol
• Margo Georgiadis
• Haim Saban

External links

• Ynon Kreiz executive profile at Mattel, Inc.
• Ynon Kreiz at Business Roundtable